Blog Archives - What's going on in Mr. Solarz' Class?

Evidence for Meeting Common Core Standards

2/26/2018

Character Comparison:
How are Josh and Kate similar and different? What evidence do we have to support our claims?

Character's Past:
"How has the Mystery Club changed during the book?" What evidence do we have to support our claims?

Text-to-Text Connection:
In what ways are Wonder and Rules similar (two books)? What evidence do we have to support our claims?

Character Trait:
What examples from the text are evidence that Ryan is a bully? (A character is a specific personality trait)

Inference with Evidence:
Jason thinks that Catherine is embarrassed of him.

What's the theme?
Explain how specific moments in the text combine to create a moral or theme and describe that theme. The theme we chose is: Don't judge others by their differences

Prediction with Evidence:
I think Jason will be late to the dance.

Responding to a Challenge:
How did Catherine respond to the challenge of having to go to the dance with Jason?

Leadership Day 2018

2/12/2018

Before Leadership Day

After Leadership Day

Reflection/Synthesis Questions

If you could make more changes to your poster board, what would you do? Why?
What aspect of your poster board are you most proud of? Why?
How did your speech improve once you had given it several times?
In your opinion, why did it improve?
What do you hope people learned from your poster board and presentation?
What did you do to try to ensure that they learned those things?
What things were surprisingly easy for you today that you thought might have been harder?
What things were difficult today. Why were they hard for you?
What comments were people telling you about your message? What did they say that was meaningful?

Answers

If I could make more changes to my poster I wouldn't used the cool design scissors because they have no real purpose and they don't look that great. I also would've written the more on settling disagreements bigger.
I am most proud of the four pictures on the center of the board with a foam flower connecting them. I am most proud of that because we worked very hard on it and it pops on the center of the board.
I started off starting my speech by saying "My poster is about how we settle disagreements in our classroom," and towards the end I started my speech by saying "Hello welcome to leadership day my name is Carmen. Today I will tell you about how we settle disagreements in our classroom." Also I would answer questions as quickly as possible at the end I went more in depth. I also answered the questions people asked in my speech.
It improved because I became more comfortable and I got more experience about what kind of things people want to know. I also feel I got more confident talking to people as more people came. I think that also made the person who was listening to my speech more comfortable, not having to listen to a shy fidgety kid.
I hope they learned how important it is to solve our own problems and not always ask the teacher to solve it for us. I also hope they learned that solving daily problems can be as simple as rock paper scissors.
I included things about showing student leadership and how we solve our own problems without asking the teacher. In my speech I also included how simple rock paper scissors is and how efficient it is in solving problems.
Answering people's questions was very easy because I thought I always knew the answers I thought some would catch me off guard but they didn't. I also thought that I wouldn't be able to tell if they were interested so I kept looking at their faces and luckily I could tell.
One thing what was hard for me was explaining how my topic shows student leadership. It was hard because I knew what I was talking about but I couldn't really put it into words without using the word like all the time.
People always said when they first came up to me, "Oooo yes this is definitely an important subject," or "Yeah settling disagreements can definitely be difficult and tough even in the real world," or something like that. At the end some people said that it looked like I looked very hard on my presentation. They also said that learning to solve our own problems is very helpful for the real world.

Global School Play Day 2018

2/7/2018

Reflection Questions

Answers

Why does Peter Gray feel that children need more experience playing games without adult interference? (Remember: All answers need follow-up sentences! Your answer is always better by the 2nd and 3rd sentences!)
How did you improve your creativity, improvisation, teamwork, and initiative skills today? If you don't know what some of these skills are, please ask me!
Why should other teachers do Global School Play Day in their classrooms?

I think it might be because playing without parents influence could help kids be more free and use their imagination. He might also feel like kids are always on their technology and not playing outside.
I definitely improved my improvisation skills because since we didn't read the directions and you saw a piece of the game you weren't using you had to improvise it into your game. I also improved my teamwork skills because I had to listen to other's ideas on how to better improve the game and I had to be patient with them when teaching them how to play.
They should do it in their classroom because it lets kids use their imagination to come up with rules for their games. They should also do it because it is a fun break from school work but you are still learning things.

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